Single Estate, Hand-Crafted Mornington Peninsula Wines
We are situated within the beautiful Mornington Peninsula Region and have the model climate for growing high quality, cool climate wines. Our site is ideally positioned on a gentle slope facing directly north, and the vines have maximum exposure to sunlight. For the same reason our rows are orientated north-south which ensures the best exposure to both morning and afternoon sunlight.
Our soils are grey clay loams located on volcanic tuffs. Sounds very unexciting! Exactly, our soils are not the rich fertile soils you would normally wish for agriculture, which means that they produce low vigour vines and low tonnages crops. For vines, this means canopies that are easier to manage, better exposure to sunlight and more concentrated flavours. We believe that the high clay content is another important factor, as it is in Burgundy, providing good controlled access for the vines to ground water stored in the clay in summer and early autumn months. The soil also has a high organic and microbiological content that we believe also has an influence on the quality of the grapes.
Our vineyard is very small, being only just over 3 hectares of vines. This allows us to intensively care for the vines. To ensure good canopy management we use a variety of techniques to ensure a good distribution of shoots and an optimal exposure of the grapes to sunlight. These techniques include bud rubbing, shoot thinning and leaf plucking. We constantly check the condition and development of the grapes throughout the growing season. If the cropping levels are expected to be high, we undertake "green" pruning to remove a percentage of the grape bunches and to bring our cropping levels back to our targets. We keep our pinot noir tonnages to between 1.0 and 2.0 tonnes to the acre and chardonnay to between 2.0 and 2.5 tonnes to the acre. These are very low yields by any standard and result in intensely flavoured wines.
The grape varieties that we grow are exclusively pinot noir and chardonnay, which are two varieties that have proved ideally suited for the Mornington Peninsula. The clones that we use are the Burgundy pinot clones MV6, 114 and 115 and chardonnay clone P58. The results so far are exciting - small compact bunches with quality grapes. The skin to juice ratio is excellent and as a result the wines have good colour and structure.
Our goal for the viticulture is to be environmentally sensitive, maintain sustainable practices with intensive care for the vines. We maintain natural bush along the boundaries of the vineyard to encourage native flora and fauna and natural predators for some of common vineyard pests. We are particularly pleased to have a variety of resident frogs and the occasional visiting koala.
Owners Paul and Denise recently undertook a study trip to Burgundy where they visited some of the top producers and returned with a number of new initiatives to put into practice in the vineyard and winery.
During 2007 vintage, we were supported by a young French winemaker - Arnaud Vignolles - who qualified in Viticulture and Oenology at the Lycée Charlemagne in Carcassonne. He has several vintages under his belt in Burgundy and Bordeaux and brought Silverwood lots of new ideas as well as some much needed muscle and energy to help us through the vintage.
